


Smoke 'em if you got 'em

by beedekka



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:01:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3698369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beedekka/pseuds/beedekka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arcade thinks about Vegas, and living, and dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke 'em if you got 'em

Arcade leant back heavily against the broken wall behind him, pressing his shoulders into the warm stone and trusting it not to collapse. The uneven surface scratched his skin through the thin cotton of his shirt; it felt pleasant, and he let his head fall back too, resting it carefully and closing his eyes.

The sun beat down on him, showing red through his eyelids, and he wondered if he was burning. His face felt perpetually dry and windswept since he’d started walking the wastes, his fair skin no match for a post-nuclear summer, but he didn’t care. Once, he might have been vain, but his new life had given him a renewed sense of purpose and he felt like he wore it on him in his traveller’s appearance.

He listened to the strange but familiar sounds of the world around him, heightened yet disassociated by closing his eyes. There was a low buzz coming from somewhere – machinery, he supposed – the dynamos and flywheels that kept the lights of Vegas always blinking, day or night. It seemed wasteful to have them working in sun as bright as this, but they were the vital signs of the Strip. Shut off, the place was dead and there was nothing to distract from the decay; she'd be a sorry corpse, he thought, if the bombs ever came back to finish the job, wiped out all organic life for good. The robots would last as long as they lasted, and the bulbs would blow one by one.

Arcade realised that if it happened right now, the first and last he would know about it would be the red behind his eyelids flaring to blinding white. Even though he didn’t believe in tempting fate, he waited for it to happen.

Five minutes later, the red and the low buzz were still in his eyes and ears, and his limbs had settled into their stance as securely as the stone wall.

 

“What’re you doing out here?”

Arcade opened his eyes, half-lidded, and let the Courier come into focus in the glare of the sun, shimmering hot air rising behind him off the baking ground. “I’m thinking about the end of the world.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

The Courier frowned, his dark eyebrows knitting together and showing up the lines in his deeply tanned skin. It made Arcade smile, aware that his unexpected answer must have sounded both flip and disturbing at the same time. Maybe if his tone hadn’t been quite so nonchalant… He turned the question around: “What are you doing?”

The Courier shrugged. “Just walking, and looking for you. Thought you’d have sneaked around the back for a smoke.”

“You know me too well,” Arcade conceded. “Although you’re a fraction early to catch me red-handed.”

“Hm…” The Courier came to lean against the wall beside Arcade, butting up comfortably against him so that their shoulders met, warm and familiar. He offered Arcade one of his cigarettes. “If the end of the world’s coming, let’s smoke together.” 

 

_-fin_


End file.
